The criminal charges were dropped without prejudice; so, the New Mexico DA's office can re-file.
I had previously been told that Mr. Baldwin has since admitted to pulling the trigger. Apparently that's false. I never saw any evidence of that.
Now, nearly two years later (God knows why it took this long), investigators have concluded what I knew from day one, because I have the same gun -- that the gun couldn't have gone off unless the trigger was pulled.
Let's unpack this.
My most generous interpretation of what might have happened, given the facts of the case, is that Baldwin didn't know that he had his finger on the trigger. I've had to intervene with new shooters using my .45 Long Colt Army Revolver, who are familiar with modern firearms, who weren't used to the order of operations and the functions of the gun. I've seen fingers inside of the trigger guard when they shouldn't have been there. That's why I've been vigilant and stepped in.
Still, at no point were any of these people operating the firearm with a human being downrange.
Baldwin was apparently rehearsing a cross draw.
A single action revolver, functioning properly, needs the hammer to be fully cocked and the trigger to be pulled in order to fire.
It doesn't have to happen in that order.
To be generous to Baldwin would be to assume that he accidently depressed the trigger during the draw before cocking the hammer, and when he released the hammer, it fell and discharged the gun.
So far as I can tell, even in within these generous parameters, Mr. Baldwin is still likely guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
The basic rules of gun safety are interesting in that, you really need to violate more than one at a time to have a really bad day.
- Never point a gun at anything you're not willing to destroy.
- Treat every gun as if it's loaded.
- Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire.
- Establish your target and what's behind it.
How many of these basic rules did Baldwin violate?
I think it's clearly three out of four.
Bullets don't curve; so, the gun was pointed at Hutchins.
His finger was on the trigger.
The gun was clearly loaded.
What's a sick joke is that Baldwin admitted to not checking the gun because he didn't want to insult Ms. Gutierrez-Reed.
Gun people aren't insulted when people check the guns when they exchange hands.
If I'm handing my Colt off to a friend to examine or dry fire, 100% of the time, I'll check to make sure that the gun is empty, and 100%of the time, I'll the person I'm handing the gun to will check the damn gun. It's not an insult to me that the other person doesn't take my word for it.
Still, beyond all of this, why was the gun pointed at Hutchins?
It's not like the malfunctioning Luger scene in Schindler's List.
How does an anti-gun person like Baldwin, who has been outspoken for decades about how dangerous guns are, who has admitted that he knew that he was operating a real gun, who was a producer on the fucking movie, not take a moment and suggest that Ms. Hutchins and the rest of the crew move away from the line of fire?
If you shoot enough, you're eventually gonna have some kind of an accident. I've had one incident of a gun going off that I thought was empty during my twenty years of shooting; but, the gun was pointed at dirt. It was a scary moment; but, nobody got hurt.
I used to do gun shows with the same model of gun using blanks. At no point would I ever point the gun directly at a fellow performer.
All this needed to be was a scary moment on set.
If Mr. Baldwin followed two out of the four basic rules of gun safety, we wouldn't be here now.
The actus reus and the mens rea aspects of this case seem to be stacked against Mr. Baldwin at this point.